


That Place

by WolfVenom



Category: Barry (TV 2018)
Genre: Abuse, Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Disturbing Themes, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Goodbyes, Graphic Description, Healthy Relationships, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Major Character Injury, Murder, Murder-Suicide, Past Domestic Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Sad Ending, Sorry Not Sorry, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfVenom/pseuds/WolfVenom
Summary: Starting now.





	That Place

**Author's Note:**

> bill hader take a year off to be with your family and take care of yourself challenge 
> 
> [ warnings in the tags, i really dont care if you get upset reading something you knew was gonna be hurtful lol ]

Barry knew when he entered ‘That Place’ in his mind. When the droll of everyday life drowned beneath the rushing of blood in his head, filling the empty spaces within with nothing but unadulterated  _ hate.  _ He remembered Fuches telling him to sit down, be calm and listen closely, do this and that, no questions asked. Remembered how it made him feel like a dog, trained to heel and obey at one single word like he wasn’t a fucking human being. The leash pulled taut at his throat and the order to sink his fangs into anyone  _ they  _ wanted.  _ I made you, Barry,  _ he said, and beneath the sting of his words masked with such fake care there lay an unspoken  _ but I can unmake you just as easily.  _

He never escaped That Place, per se. But when Fuches kicked him down by the knee and held him at metaphorical gunpoint, mister Cousineau helped him map out the walls of his mind’s prison and find ways to make it more  _ bearable.  _ To Fuches he was an asset, a product to be tweaked and turned at will, but to Gene Barry was something deeper. Accepted, maybe. Understood, might be a stretch, but where Fuches utilized his most vulnerable moments to dig his grave deeper, mister Cousineau helped him channel his feelings into  _ acting.  _ He broke that cycle which had been so ingrained in his being that theatre just became another coping strategy, one with purpose. He didn’t want to lose it. The family he had made, who saw him for what he could be and not who he had been. 

Sally could see it too. She had her own place as well, when pressure weighed her down from every angle until breathing was a luxury. On the stage, it spilled from her like bubbling froth from a cliffside, savage and unending, loud but yet so unimaginably freeing it stole the very air from your lungs. A survivor, she told Barry one night, curled up on the bed with the gentle glow of fairy lights illuminating their rumpled scripts. Because a victim was someone to be pitied, and a survivor was someone who had the strength to change. 

Barry remembered the smell of her hair that night, citrus or some sort of flowery fragrance from that shampoo that he once borrowed for himself in a spell of curiosity. If he retreated into the tight box of fury, violence, shame,  _ regret  _ \-- he could imagine the sharp tang of gun oil and blood was her. 

It made him ashamed. Sally was… She was something too pure for a murderer like him to even think about, with red staining his hands even when no one but himself could see it, and every scar littering his body ached with the vengeance of each person he had earned it from. The notch from a poorly healed nose from Ronny, the ugly, pus-filled mess of his shoulder blade from his crazy demon daughter, a cracked rib from a scuffle with some Chechen mess. Like their ghosts wailed on him from the afterlife,  _ you horrible, evil, murdering sonuva bitch --  _

Sally and mister Cousineau and Jermaine and  _ all of them,  _ they let him know what something  _ good  _ felt like. But he couldn’t-- Barry couldn’t change who he  _ was.  _ The dead crawled against his skin when it should have been Sally’s hand on his arm, and rage burned inside his chest easier than love… It was all he was allowed… 

Where silence usually struck him down once he hit realization, now there was only Gene’s voice on the other end of the line, broken. He wasn’t acting. “ _ Barry. You killed Janice, Barry, didn’t you? And Ryan, too? You killed them both, and God knows how many other fucking people… This-- This isn’t war, Barry. You murdered them all, and you got away with it? Is it a joke to you? Are they? I take back what I said that night Barry Berkman. You are one of the best damned actors I have ever met, because I have yet to meet a star who can live with themselves like you do after something that despicable.”  _ And it was like Fuches all over again. The comfort turned into bitter emptiness. 

Barry’s phone blared angrily at him, pressed loosely to the side of his face where it had been since he received the call, the empty line shrieking for him to hang up on someone who didn’t exist for him anymore. Each life he took came back with staggering clarity, mocking his very existence in their place in the all familiar panic, fitful episodes of spine-numbing fear and mortification. Men and women he removed from the equation just to preserve his petty and undeserved second chance at a normal life? People and their families he destroyed in some unjust quest to achieve his own happy end? 

  
  
  
  
  


_ “Hi, this is Sally Reed, I can’t answer the phone right now but you can leave a voicemail and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can! Thanks, buh-bye!”  _

****

Evidence did not matter to Barry Berkman. Bodies littered the hideout, empty clips scattered from here to the monastery he shot up in a fit, no doubt infested with his DNA. The black vehicle he emptied his last mag into was parked outside the run-down warehouse, no guards to bar his bloody path of redemption. 

_ Not redemption, Barry. Just your own, disgusting fucking needs. All you’ve ever been good at, wrapped up in one massacre after another. Happiness? Good endings? Maybe for Barry Block, but the only man I see here is a disgrace.  _

_ _ Barry blinked hard against the onslaught in his head, harsh fluorescents making his ears ring louder than they already were. He missed Gene. Missed Sally, too. But knowing damn well he could never share the same space as them, Barry vowed to get them both the justice they deserved.

Fuches was not hard to find. Three guys at the doorway, two more inside the room, a babbling excuse of a man pleading for his life, trying to talk Barry out of what he wanted ( _ needed _ ) for the umpteenth time and Barry’s anger  _ boiled  _ in his throat. The pain this man forced on him, the fact that he was the reason Barry could never readjust to a clean life, manipulated him into something he never wanted to be because he was in That Place, craving validation and the sense of purpose from someone --  _ anyone  _ willing to pick up the broken pieces of Barry Berkman and make something useful out of them. Like the abrupt muteness inside his head as the shock hit his system and the mania took hold, every hole in his body ceased flaring in agony, and one by one bubbled up red in the empty spaces bullets created, similar to the one in his heart. A play pretend, fox to hare, and beneath the bloodied pad of his finger, the trigger offered no resistance. 

He did it for himself, that time. Not for Fuches, not for money, not for Gene or Sally. But because he knew that even when he finally bled out on a dirty concrete floor in the middle of fucking nowhere, he’d get rightful justice for everything in that final bullet. Brain matter painted the white walls and nausea from blood loss finally caught up to him, guts nearly spilling from a violent knife wound to his belly. Barry sank to the floor slowly, the coolness of the ground soothing. 

Where the handgun slipped easily from his frail and shaking hands, his phone was a solid weight in his grip, slippery and screen cracked from the trauma, but there wasn’t anything in his call history anyway. Sally was at a meeting with her agent. Barry smiled. He was so fucking proud of her. Swallowing bloody bile clogging the back of his throat Barry let the resounding click of his mobile shutting down take him into That Place. 

“...S-Starting now…” came the hoarse promise. 

  
  
  
  
  


_ “Hey, Sally, its Barry. Uh, yeah, I just called to tell you that uhm… Good luck in your meeting today, I hope everything goes well and that you know I love and support you and that you’re the best actress I’ve ever met, so, thank you for that. I wanted to just call and let you know that um, well you were right, and I realize now that I can be a good actor, too, and I wish I could share in those experiences with each other but some people can’t change, and I know that now, but I hope you understand that I never,  _ ever  _ lied to you. You were the most important person to me and I know I say this enough but you are going to doubt every single thing I’ve done by morning, but that wasn’t  _ me.  _ Just… promise to think of me as the guy  _ you  _ saw on that stage, who you believed in, ‘kay? And if that guy isn’t someone you think is worthy of a happy ending, then that’s fine by me. Love you, Sal, see you soon.”  _

_ _ ****

**Author's Note:**

> not beta-read, pure vent piece over that S2 ending. idk i thought maybe i should add more or a second chapter after this for like closure on the living but i honestly? dont really give a fuch-es ;)
> 
> id love to hear your thoughts on the show in the comments, because lord knows i too have a fucking lot of them lol.


End file.
